Ubuntu considers “huge” change that would end traditional release cycle

A new release every 6 months was apparently too often -- as indicated by the little problems that kept slipping past the maintainers with every release, the "fixed" problems that kept returning with new releases, and even things that were just let slide. Maybe this was just a side effect of the focus on developing the Unity desktop environment (I don't like that either -- but that's really a whole different sort of complaint). I started out on Debian, so I don't mind the small extra effort in installing/setting-up, or I use Mint, but I know too many former Ubuntu fans who have left for more dependable alternatives.

So as it is, I've been telling newbies that if they do consider straight, Canonical Ubuntu, that they should stick to the LTS editions, anyways.

If this new scheme results in an over-all improvement in overall quality and reliability, then I for one will be all for it, and once again will feel comfortable to recommend Ubuntu to newbies (those who can stand the Unity DE), alongside Mint and a few others.

And that's the big question in my own mind -- will Canonical use this as a way to get on top of the pace of development, and thus return to it's former status as a reliable, dependable newbie-friendly distro? Or will this just be an excuse to divert time, effort and resources away from the necessary details, that have been too much neglected already?

As a strategy to improve quality and predictability, this plan has a great deal of merit. If not executed well and with commitment to fundamentals, it won't help, and could well make Ubuntu's shortcomings even worse. I may not care for Ubuntu that much -- but I hope that they do this right, and make this strategy work.

I've been using Ubuntu for a few years. Initially, I liked the feeling of having a shiny new version to play with every six months, but now I tend to skip six-month releases and upgrade only when some cool new feature I really want becomes available. As a result, I have different computers running different versions. A rolling release cycle like this would provide a much better match to how I use Ubuntu.

It's also important that a rolling release cycle would be much better for their mobile efforts. Increasing the time between versions would help reduce Android-like fragmentation, and the rolling updates would allow them to keep up with new technology developments.

What defines Ubuntu is essentially a handful of packages (mostly UI), a 6 month release cycle, and a for-profit organization providing support. Otherwise the distro is almost verbatim Debian. So with a rolling release they are just planning on using Debian unstable's model?

As someone who runs and loves Debian unstable, I guess that's a good thing, but I guess it's just blurring the lines between the distributions even more.

Only part of it true actually. Ubuntu is well known from its start to be focusing on hardware support, codecs & eye-candy (plymouth, unified theme, etc.) out of the box. I had experience of running both on a netbook and Wi-Fi worked under Ubuntu out of the box, while Debian (unstable) didn't have the right drivers, the right kernel, etc. So, yes, the difference is blurring, but no, the difference is still great from a user point of view.

Debian is a great distro, but its installation needs to be polished. Considering the rolling releases is my favorite feature of Debian, while I prefer the final polishing work on Debian to be done by Ubuntu team and hate Ubuntu's release cycles, that's the best news I could expect from Canonical.

This doesn't make a lot of sense. They are already covering both bases with the LTS releases and the 6-month releases, 2 years per major version just sounds too inflexible for a general desktop user, which then they'll have to keep happy with the 'rolling release'. But if you start introducing new features, you'll piss of the LTS people.

It does seem though that 6-months is too fast, new releases that are not LTS are often too buggy imo. Maybe switch to a 1 year cycle with an LTS every 3 years or so? That makes a bit more sense to me at least.

4. Propietary drivers are rather annoying to deal with for the end user, and in my experience, they are quite inconsistant across releases. I actually have an 11.10 partition on my computer with an NVIDIA graphics card just because the drivers optimize 3-d perfomance better than any other release that I've tried.

From this, I wonder if Ubuntu - or any distro for that matter - could ever pull off this method with true end users like I would ideally want, or if it will get bogged down by end-user complaints, and just become a giant testing ground for the advanced users to play with. What a predigament...

I would have imagine with steam now available and vendors now renewing support for Linux that this will be less of an issue over time.

This doesn't make a lot of sense. They are already covering both bases with the LTS releases and the 6-month releases, 2 years per major version just sounds too inflexible for a general desktop user, which then they'll have to keep happy with the 'rolling release'. But if you start introducing new features, you'll piss of the LTS people.

It does seem though that 6-months is too fast, new releases that are not LTS are often too buggy imo. Maybe switch to a 1 year cycle with an LTS every 3 years or so? That makes a bit more sense to me at least.

1 year would be fine by me.

And I agree that you don't want rolling release for people who want a stable environment.That can easily be solved though by calling one repo "stable" and have it be exactly what LTS gets now, and the other labeled "beta" and disabled by default. You put major update versions to things in beta so that users who want bleeding edge can help test out the features that will go into the next LTS. And understand that they may sacrifice some stability.

If Ubuntu ripped Unity out and replaced it with something similar to Mint's Cinnamon interface, then I'd hop back. Unity is just that bad, and I can't stand using it. But until then, I'll stick with Mint or standard Debian.

I think this is a pretty decent idea. The downside is that every two years, customers are going to be surprised by a large number of changes. Currently the 6 month cycle makes everything happen somewhat gradually.

The upside is that you don't have terrible 6 month release like Quantal. I've haven't been able to get that to install stably on hardware without tweaking and I've tried it on three different machines varying from 2007ish to brand new. (As a side note I normally use the 6th month release, which I've been with since Warty).

I might actually consider switching back to Ubuntu if they go rolling. I've always found the issue with Ubuntu was out-of-date packages. Having to add and keep track of a giant pile of extra PPA's just to have the latest/greatest version of package <x> is a waste of time...

Arch/Gentoo et all are extremely stable, assuming you're able to read instructions.

Of all the Ubuntu releases I have used, 12.10 seems to give me the most problems and headaches. It just lacks polish. If a release cannot be polished enough in six months, I'm not sure a rolling release is really going to improve that.

Well, this should be fun! My HD 4670 card relies on 12.6 Legacy drivers that don't work with 12.10. I was able to research this prior to updating. I opted to stick with 12.04 in hopes AMD would update them to work with the newer xorg. With a rolling release, I would have been greeted to a black screen and fumbling for a solution. Now more than ever, it's open source drivers (Intel) or bust if Canonical goes this route.

Yeah,I had some problems with those as well (I twice nuked the installs on my old Compaq before I narrowed down the problems to the graphics driver) . Just use the handy PPA a kind soul has put together sudo add-apt-repository ppa:makson96/fglrxsudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get upgradesudo apt-get install fglrx-legacy

On the plus side for 12.10,it finally did a UEFI install on the aforementioned Compaq without no glitches whatsoever,so I'm kinda forced to use it instead of the LTS

Same skepticism as everyone else, I've got Ubuntu on a toy-for-hacking laptop & I'm still nowhere near thinking that it'll be a replacement for even my main development machine (MBP). I don't keep up to date on *NIX news at all, but I'm pretty impressed with the effort that the Ubuntu team is putting into actually being better (such as the change to Unity regardless of controversy).

This doesn't make a lot of sense. They are already covering both bases with the LTS releases and the 6-month releases, 2 years per major version just sounds too inflexible for a general desktop user, which then they'll have to keep happy with the 'rolling release'. But if you start introducing new features, you'll piss of the LTS people.

It does seem though that 6-months is too fast, new releases that are not LTS are often too buggy imo. Maybe switch to a 1 year cycle with an LTS every 3 years or so? That makes a bit more sense to me at least.

Microsoft and their Windows would like to say hello and counter your argument, has they represent the majority of desktop user, I am pretty sure they work in rolling release fashion, having update every month and a minor update (service pack) from time to time, while only releasing LTS version, with variable length of support depending on how much they suck [good old ME, still making me see blue and want to kill].

A general desktop user don't need anything but LTS cycle, it mostly just developer, gamer, IT department and enthusiast that require faster release. And rolling release can easily take care of all those, by having different level of rolling release package, basically the default would be LTS release cycle, if you want faster update you just activate the appropriate repo for your need.

That right there is the fundamental design problem with the 700 odd Linux like 'distro's' in existence.Why do the Linux crowd think its great to (fatally) co mingle the core system libraries and the user applications?

Why is it a good thing to have all your user applications frozen in amber for 2+ years because updating even one user app could totally bork the core system?

Maybe somebody in Fedora/Ubuntu has finally clued up that Linux is going nowhere until users can add/remove/update their applications software without affecting their core system. Maybe they are sick of running out of date applications??

Please don't start rabbiting on to me about package management tools - they are a big fat bandaid over the stupidest OS design flaw ever foisted on us.

Rolling releases?? Yes! Yes! YES!! And separate the core system from the user apps while you are at it god damn it!

The current release cycle is predictable, and receives a lot of attention, both in terms of staying current in the media and in terms of testers and developers. Ubuntu should be focusing on increasing visibility, not reducing it. Oh hi Fedora. Hi Mint.

I wonder how Linux Mint will handle this as their distro is built on Ubuntu.

Switch to Debian as their base.

Actually after checking seem like the last few stable were release every two years, so it the same release cycle currently, so my wrong, but it does feel like on longer release cycle considering everything in stable basically went through almost every other distro already.

Original comment:Which got even longer release cycle... with 3 different update level.

That right there is the fundamental design problem with the 700 odd Linux like 'distro's' in existence.Why do the Linux crowd think its great to (fatally) co mingle the core system libraries and the user applications?

Why is it a good thing to have all your user applications frozen in amber for 2+ years because updating even one user app could totally bork the core system?

You must be doing something very interesting with your Linux system if your common desktop applications are 2 or more years old.

Heck, I run RHEL at work and I have the latest LibreOffice, Firefox ESR, Acroread, & so on… but your complaint is with Ubuntu? Or maybe you simply haven't a clue what you're talking about.

chris2kari wrote:

Maybe somebody in Fedora/Ubuntu has finally clued up that Linux is going nowhere until users can add/remove/update their applications software without affecting their core system. Maybe they are sick of running out of date applications??

Please don't start rabbiting on to me about package management tools - they are a big fat bandaid over the stupidest OS design flaw ever foisted on us.

Bad analogy. Package management GUIs in Linux are shit, but not because of an underlying problem. I have no problem manipulating the underlying structure, working around common problems, etc. Much of the problem in Ubuntu is the lack of a "Repoforge"-like collection of popular (and unpopular?) additions, so a multitude of helpful souls go and create their own miniature apt repos. Whereas in RHEL, beyond the vendor repos, I have EPEL, RPMforge, and the company's private collection.

chris2kari wrote:

Rolling releases?? Yes! Yes! YES!! And separate the core system from the user apps while you are at it god damn it!

1980 just called, they want their design flaw back guy's!

If you think rolling releases will solve your problems, then you don't know what's causing them.

Here, let me help: ditch all the shitty third-party repos you've collected. Now update. Now re-enable those repos, one by one. Update between each new addition. Okay. Found your problem repo? Delete it.

Ubuntu already has pretty serious stability problems as it is, and I can't imagine rolling releases working out well. It becomes vaguely like Debian again, but more like living in Experimental, not even Unstable.

If you're having problems managing change, which Canonical definitely seems to be, it strikes me that the solution is unlikely to be more change. I see this as a way of taking their internal pain, that of trying to put together a stable release every six months, and pushing it off on the users, who have to then deal with a distro that's either very old, or perpetually breaking underneath them.

They may not have the resources to do this, but it seems to me that the actual solution is better QA, something that's hard to do with open source.

You know, ever since the GNOME people lost their minds and wrecked their desktop, Ubuntu has lost its appeal for me almost completely. It was never very good on servers (I use Debian there) but I loved it on desktops. 10.04 was an awesome distro, probably the best free operating system ever assembled. And then everything just fell to shit. Unity is painful, just a giant basket of suck, aimed at machines I don't use. It's so focused on saving screen real estate, on my 30 inch screen, that it moves window controls all over the darn place, so that I have to hunt for them almost every time. And they do this to save like 12 vertical pixels out of 1600.

Linux Mint, with the MATE desktop. is at least acceptable, so I've converted my VMs to it. At this point, though, I don't think it's likely that I'd run Linux as a full time desktop again, because I just don't trust the desktop developers anymore. I don't know who they're serving, but it doesn't feel like it's me.

Of all the Ubuntu releases I have used, 12.10 seems to give me the most problems and headaches. It just lacks polish. If a release cannot be polished enough in six months, I'm not sure a rolling release is really going to improve that.

But then leaving the underlings to deal with rolling releases and bring out the big dogs for the biennial LTS releases leaves plenty of time for polish.

I switched from LTS to rolling Ubuntu releases for a web server that was being regularly scanned for PCI compliance checks. While the security team at Ubuntu did a great job of keeping things like MySQL and PHP patched, the version numbers weren't what the scanner was looking for. So I'd have to manually request an exception which was approved. But it took time and was a bit annoying. So I went to the regular release and all has been well. Sounds like this proposal would be a step backward for me.

(Yeah, I did eventually just turn off the banner on Apache etc so the scanner didn't know what version was running; a good basic practice not to give out information you don't need to. However, we had to pay for the scanning anyway, so I figured it would be a way to offload some of the responsibility of checking on things. Now I just make sure to do aptitude -u a couple times a week.)

Ubuntu already has pretty serious stability problems as it is, and I can't imagine rolling releases working out well. It becomes vaguely like Debian again, but more like living in Experimental, not even Unstable.

If you're having problems managing change, which Canonical definitely seems to be, it strikes me that the solution is unlikely to be more change. I see this as a way of taking their internal pain, that of trying to put together a stable release every six months, and pushing it off on the users, who have to then deal with a distro that's either very old, or perpetually breaking underneath them.

They may not have the resources to do this, but it seems to me that the actual solution is better QA, something that's hard to do with open source.

You know, ever since the GNOME people lost their minds and wrecked their desktop, Ubuntu has lost its appeal for me almost completely. It was never very good on servers (I use Debian there) but I loved it on desktops. 10.04 was an awesome distro, probably the best free operating system ever assembled. And then everything just fell to shit. Unity is painful, just a giant basket of suck, aimed at machines I don't use. It's so focused on saving screen real estate, on my 30 inch screen, that it moves window controls all over the darn place, so that I have to hunt for them almost every time. And they do this to save like 12 vertical pixels out of 1600.

Linux Mint, with the MATE desktop. is at least acceptable, so I've converted my VMs to it. At this point, though, I don't think it's likely that I'd run Linux as a full time desktop again, because I just don't trust the desktop developers anymore. I don't know who they're serving, but it doesn't feel like it's me.

I want to quote this because this is exactly how I feel. I've been using Ubuntu since 6.06 (Debian before that) and stopped upgrading at 10.04 LTS. At work I've been forced to migrate the servers to virtual instances of CentOs which I don't mind too much. My sole Linux desktop 10.04 LTS is probably not getting upgraded anytime soon because (a) I like it as it is, and (b) I'm largely using OSX now.

Regarding the rolling release cycle, I doubt it will be very stable based on how horrible the non-LTS releases have been. I'd rather see a yearly release with an LTS every 3 years as others mentioned above. The only plus for rolling release will be new hardware compatibility. This may be a big plus for many, but isn't for me.

If they had an LTS release every 2 years, and a completely separate rolling release track, then I would be happy with that.

There is no way that they could do rolling updates to an LTS release without either causing a lot of problems for people that need to keep kernel versions, etc. in check, or failing to deliver lots of good stuff in between the two year releases.

But as a 6-monthly user, I am happy to ditch those releases to getting rolling updates as and when they are ready, And there is no reason why you can't do timed LTS releases as a separate thing, to keep those that need certainty happy.

What defines Ubuntu is essentially a handful of packages (mostly UI), a 6 month release cycle, and a for-profit organization providing support. Otherwise the distro is almost verbatim Debian. So with a rolling release they are just planning on using Debian unstable's model?

As someone who runs and loves Debian unstable, I guess that's a good thing, but I guess it's just blurring the lines between the distributions even more.

Only part of it true actually. Ubuntu is well known from its start to be focusing on hardware support, codecs & eye-candy (plymouth, unified theme, etc.) out of the box. I had experience of running both on a netbook and Wi-Fi worked under Ubuntu out of the box, while Debian (unstable) didn't have the right drivers, the right kernel, etc. So, yes, the difference is blurring, but no, the difference is still great from a user point of view.

Debian is a great distro, but its installation needs to be polished. Considering the rolling releases is my favorite feature of Debian, while I prefer the final polishing work on Debian to be done by Ubuntu team and hate Ubuntu's release cycles, that's the best news I could expect from Canonical.

What I'd like to know is why Debian isn't incorporating more of Ubuntu's work. Squeeze was released in 2011, and still didn't let you configure WPA in the installer. Canonical's adware move reminds me of the value of having a non-profit like Debian run your distribution, but at some point I have to say, "seriously, it's been 7 years that Ubuntu had this, when will it find its way upstream?"

I switched from LTS to rolling Ubuntu releases for a web server that was being regularly scanned for PCI compliance checks. While the security team at Ubuntu did a great job of keeping things like MySQL and PHP patched, the version numbers weren't what the scanner was looking for. So I'd have to manually request an exception which was approved. But it took time and was a bit annoying. So I went to the regular release and all has been well. Sounds like this proposal would be a step backward for me.

(Yeah, I did eventually just turn off the banner on Apache etc so the scanner didn't know what version was running; a good basic practice not to give out information you don't need to. However, we had to pay for the scanning anyway, so I figured it would be a way to offload some of the responsibility of checking on things. Now I just make sure to do aptitude -u a couple times a week.)

I don't know what your industry is or what you have to work with, but I'd think the obvious solution is to come up with a better security aduit process. I've worked in what we now call "DevOps" for a long, long time and I've never seen a single production server running anything with a rolling release. Using patched versions of packaged software is standard procedure in almost every shop, so whoever came up with the compliance process should be fired and never allowed to use a computer again.

While I'm a fan of rolling releases, I don't see it working out well for Ubuntu. It is one thing to integrate and test new packages as they become available from upstream, like Arch or Mint or Debian Unstable do and do well. However, Ubuntu has a habit of making large, sweeping, system-wide changes that are fairly different from upstream, or completely unique to them (upstart, unity, etc). These large-scale changes are hard to do piecemeal in a rolling release fashion. But they will have to be done that way if opportunities for large releases only happen every two years. This will lead to significantly greater instability for users on the rolling release, and Ubuntu's 6-month releases are already buggy enough.

I switched from LTS to rolling Ubuntu releases for a web server that was being regularly scanned for PCI compliance checks. While the security team at Ubuntu did a great job of keeping things like MySQL and PHP patched, the version numbers weren't what the scanner was looking for. So I'd have to manually request an exception which was approved. But it took time and was a bit annoying. So I went to the regular release and all has been well. Sounds like this proposal would be a step backward for me.

(Yeah, I did eventually just turn off the banner on Apache etc so the scanner didn't know what version was running; a good basic practice not to give out information you don't need to. However, we had to pay for the scanning anyway, so I figured it would be a way to offload some of the responsibility of checking on things. Now I just make sure to do aptitude -u a couple times a week.)

Install mod-security, and google SecServerSignature. Most PCI scans are moronic. I had to argue over an exception because the version I was running had this "High Priority" privilege escalation bug... on that version running on Microsoft Windows.

Um, your scan doesn't even realize that the server is on Linux, yet I'm supposed to depend on it for security. Yeah right.

I switched from LTS to rolling Ubuntu releases for a web server that was being regularly scanned for PCI compliance checks. While the security team at Ubuntu did a great job of keeping things like MySQL and PHP patched, the version numbers weren't what the scanner was looking for. So I'd have to manually request an exception which was approved. But it took time and was a bit annoying. So I went to the regular release and all has been well. Sounds like this proposal would be a step backward for me.

(Yeah, I did eventually just turn off the banner on Apache etc so the scanner didn't know what version was running; a good basic practice not to give out information you don't need to. However, we had to pay for the scanning anyway, so I figured it would be a way to offload some of the responsibility of checking on things. Now I just make sure to do aptitude -u a couple times a week.)

I don't know what your industry is or what you have to work with, but I'd think the obvious solution is to come up with a better security aduit process. I've worked in what we now call "DevOps" for a long, long time and I've never seen a single production server running anything with a rolling release. Using patched versions of packaged software is standard procedure in almost every shop, so whoever came up with the compliance process should be fired and never allowed to use a computer again.

Yeah rolling release is wrong for production servers. However, I can confirm with Galeran that security scanners don't recognize Ubuntu/Debian patched package numbers and report back a few vulnerabilities. This happened to me for 8.04LTS and 10.04LTS Ubuntu servers and the PHP (don't laugh) and Apache packages. It was cleared by linking the CVE's to the respective Ubuntu patch but it was a pain.

I dunno, maybe I just don't really understand what they're planning with these rolling updates, but I currently don't update Ubuntu with every release (they're too frequent for my tastes), and I like knowing that the version I'm running is largely unchanged from the day I installed it, barring bug and security fixes.

Maybe if their plan is to break the OS up into more discrete modules and offer updates to these independently then I can pick and choose whether I want to update for a new feature or stay as it is, without affecting other modules. It just needs a good update manager that can keep bug and security fixes coming while only informing me of new modules when I need them (app compatibility, old version being discontinued etc.) and otherwise just leave me alone until I decide I want a feature.

I don't imagine they're planning on forcing everyone onto a rolling release schedule. I get the impression that if you want something more stable you can keep on using the LTS repos every two years. For those of us that want something more up to date, we could enable the rolling repos.

It's already been said, but the non-LTS releases haven't really been that stable anyways, yet they still have old packages, so I don't really see the downside.